What's "Up Chuck"?

Here I vomit forth the excitement that is my life.....Since July 2004

Friday, August 26, 2005

Retro Pic Friday #2

Last Friday I enjoyed posting a few pictures from “back in the day”, so I thought I’d take another stab at it again this week. I sure hope you don’t mind. Like I suggested last week, it might be a good thing to make this a regular weekly feature. I just may continue to do so. At least till I run out of pictures. With each weekly submission I will present a picture or pictures to you, but there will also be a background story as well. Be sure to not just skip over the words and go for the picture. Y’all might just miss something exciting if you do! You all feel free to post your pics as well, but let me know so I can come to your blog and check your retro picture out, okay?
In this weeks pic we find The Chuckster playing Pirate. Actually I wasn’t just dressed up like this for the heck of it. I was an actual paid employee of The Treasure Ship on Panama City Beach, Florida in the year of our Lord, 1988. I had just completed a successful run in the musical The Pirates of Penzance Ship as character mascots. The Treasure Ship was (haven’t been back since ‘89 so not sure if it’s changed) a multi-leveled complex, shaped like an old Spanish galleon. On it’s decks were several restaurants, bars, shops and a teen dance club in the bottom appropriately called “The Brig”. I was hired as “The Captain” along with three other guys who were my crew. There was also a lovely maiden in the troop who was the continual captive of the Pirates. The management went all out and purchased pretty authentic costumes, complete with swords. During rehearsals we would learn how to fight with the swordsat a community theatre in the area when the marketing director of The Treasure Ship decided to hold auditions for a team of pirate cast members to work at the so we could perform on deck for the cameras of the guests. We were really pretty popular during that Summer of ‘88. As we’d stroll through the dinning rooms, interacting with the tourists, we would be asked to pose for pictures with kids, just like Mickey Mouse at Disney. We were encouraged to be in character at all times, using English accents as well. I was a theatre major at the time and had just completed a “voice for the theatre” class. I was quite proud of my talent. I even went so far as to create yet another character. I was a visiting student from the UK, working and attending school in the US for the summer. Everyone bought it.
PC Beach was and is a popular vacation location for people in the South East. It was inevitable that I would find myself in pictures of people I didn’t know at the time, but who would later become my friends or acquaintances. One example was a call I took, after the summer was over, from a somewhat distant cousin. Beverly, my slightly older cousin, was a Senior at Auburn University. She called me at my parents house one day and said she was looking at a picture her roommate had taken of herself posing with a pirate from Panama City. Beverly told me that the guy dressed as a pirate looked a lot like me, her cousin, but her roommate swears that the subject in the pic was a British citizen, studying in the USA. After a laugh or two I confirmed that I was indeed the dude in red crushed velvet in her friends picture. A year later I transferred to a university here in Alabama and discovered yet a few more pictures taken at The Ship with me and people who would later become my friends.
There was something about the costume that drove the women wild. I don’t know if it was the crushed red velvet, the ruffled shirt, the white stockings, the black buckled shoes, the sword or the tri-cornered hat with the feather, but they were, for the most part, digging The Chuckster. I attracted the attention of several young ladies that summer. Many times I would have my ass, or package, squeezed when pics were being taken or I would find myself making out in a dark corner of the ship’s many levels with horny and slightly tipsy college girls and even older ladies. After a while us pirates took to going commando under our costumes. Those velvet britches tended to get a bit hot during the summer nights. I remember on one occasion receiving a hand job on the top deck from some tourist chick. She performed the entire act with her hand down my pants. Take it from me, if you ever plan on getting a HJ when your wearing velvet pants, wait till the end of your shift. Walking around for the next three hours with dried nut gravy on your velvet isn’t a nice experience.
Then there was the young lady who I met in the teen club one night. I was standing along the edge of the dance floor, in costume as usual, watching the crowd of hot sweaty dancers gyrate around the floor. George Michael’s song “I want your sex” was playing and I noticed this one hot young thing mouthing the words and pointing to me. We got to talking later and I discovered she was an 18 year old student from Kentucky, named Julie I believe, down on vacation with her parents. After my shift was over I drove her to a dark section of the beach and we proceeded to really get to know each other a lot better…if you know what I mean. About three months later I was driving through town and stopped at a light where there was several kids waiting on the corner for their school bus. Standing there with all the school kids was my lovely Kentucky tourist chick from the summer before. I was quite shocked to discover Julie was just starting High School and had actually been fifteen when we had our little adventure on the sand! (You may have read about this before in my 100 Things post #’s 19 & 26.)
Well, with all that back story I now present you my Retro Pic for this week. Here is a much younger Chuckster dressed in red. The chick in white, next to the chick in purple, was the “Pirate Maiden” who also spent some quality time with me over that summer. This pic was taken by, and with, a group of students from the University I later attended. At the time I didn’t know any of them. Later a few of them would become friends. I cropped several of them out of the pic, but Snagley, I’m sure there are a couple you might just recognize. Enjoy!
Well I hope you all are having a great TGIF day and you all have a pleasant weekend as well. After a long week of work, I am looking forward to having a relaxing next couple of days. Y’all be good!